So, well, I have journeyed nearly a week with little more sleep than you would get in, perhaps, just two or three nights.  I have worked to trust my new friend and Pastor in their assurance that what happened was for His glory and His good work.  A part of me can see this for I understand the Law and know that it is good and right.  A part of me basically trusts that Pastor would not lie to me, nor would he ever knowingly allow me to hurt one of his flock.  Never.

I think the reason I have not been sleeping is because what I feared would come to pass seems to have started.  I thought I had more time.


Today's lessoning was more time than teaching.  Pastor tried to be a Southerner and come right in, but the door was locked.  He has a key, but I am sure it is stuck in a drawer somewhere.  I wanted to talk about the fourth petition, but I never do seem to get past 74.  Mostly, we talked about what I was struggling with, not really an examination with observations and answers, but just a confession on my part...though no absolution.  For, in truth, I know what I fear will come to pass.  It is the way my world works.

The one bit of teaching that gave me pause was when he spun out "in all things" for me.  Pastor was talking about how when we "count up our blessings" we do not usually include the struggles, even though those are often the times when God is blessing us with His grace and mercy and love and forgiveness.  His gifts are poured out for us and we thank Him not.  Instead, we tick off the happy times, the joyful ones.  It is not that joyful moment ought to to be left off the list, but we are to pray in all times, give thanks in all circumstances.

It made me think about how often I am the opposite of the norm.  For I most certainly see how God has carried me through the darkness.  However, I cry out to Him in the joyful times and in the in between times, not the dark ones.  For when  I am faced with trials, I think that they are only what I truly deserve and thus should not bother to ask for help or escape for they are what I have reaped from that which I have sown in my sin.

I know...I know...that is all backwards...especially with regard to Objective Grace, but the Law weighs heavily upon me for it has been the measuring stick held out before me my entire Christian life.

You know, what I wanted to do was to ask Pastor to teach me about what he meant when he asked if I saw faith as an individual act, something apart from the Church.  I wanted to ask, but I did not.  I need to get through prayer...

There is a blog Pastor found for me that I have referenced here before but do not read that much because the writer is attending a confessional Lutheran church that has let go of some of the confessions.  Still, from time to time, I skim because he and his wife are two more Protestants who were hungry all the time in their own churches and whom have discovered the amazing gift of Objective Grace and the richness of Liturgy.

Recently he made two observations that align with much that I have shared with Pastor:

• Evangelical sermons tend to be task oriented. You usually wind up with a list of things to do in order to be a better person.
• Countless churches have abandoned this critical doctrine [justification through Christ alone], and most lay people don’t even know it. They are being led by people who actually believe in the merits of good works, and the ability of man to cooperate in his own salvation. Sad, but true. Go read Luther, and get your head screwed on straight. That’s my tip for today. 

Maybe what he should have written was Go read Luther and have the scales fall away from your eyes.  Scales put there by satan, who is quite wily in how he works to twist the things of God against His children.

Sometimes I wonder what Pastor truly thinks about all the Protestant teaching I have shared with him.  Bettina rightly pointed out that Lutherans are Protestants, too.  I think most Lutherans would cast the distinction as Evangelicals, but if you read that most wondrous book The Spirituality of the Cross, you will see that Lutherans were first called Evangelicals, that although the word has been changed here in America, in Europe Evangeliche most often means a Lutheran church, not a bible or Pentecostal one.   It easiest to just say Protestant.


But back to Pastor's question.  The topic of individual faith has cropped up all over the place lately.  The one post I found most interesting was from Pastor P.  It is about the differences between I believe and We believe, focused in part on how the Creed is confessed:

Protestants among us always define faith individually and I know whereof they come... but as much as each one of us believes for himself or herself, our faith is learned from the Church, our Mother, who imparts to her children the constitutive knowledge of the faith... the Trinitarian Confession. We believe for ourselves as individuals but we confess this faith as children of the Church, our Mother, who was established by Christ and who endures to the end without being overcome by the assaults and arrows of the enemy. Hell's gates cannot overcome her. She belongs to Christ. The Church is not some utilitarian arrangement for those who need help from others. Christ established His Church to be His holy Bride, equipped her with all the treasures that she may radiate His grace to the world, and He protects and defends her to eternal life.

Remember when Jesus speaks of how oft He had wanted to gather the children of Israel under His wing as a mother hen gathers her chicks? Well, just how does Jesus do this today? How does He gather us lost and wounded, marked by death? How does He do this? Through His Church! Where He has placed His Word and His Sacraments, where His ministers stand and speak in His place the life-giving Word of the Gospel, and where His people find their voice under the prompting of the Spirit to say and sing their AMEN to all that He has done. His Church mothers us with His grace with the treasures of His riches that He has entrusted to her care -- the sacred mysterion (word, water, bread, and wine).

When we stand together and speak together "We believe" is it a subtle yet real acknowledgment of our place within this blessed fellowship as children of God. When we pray, we pray "Our Father" even when we pray alone. When we confess, it is our own voice that speak but the words we speak are given to us to say -- the wonderful confession whose first forms predated much of the New Testament and whose words were renewed in Council to answer the heretic and silence the doubting. Whoever would be saved must confess... not what is formed in their feelings or the thoughts are given birth in their minds... no, whoever would be saved must confess the catholic faith and the catholic faith is this... We believe...

What I am saying is not an argument from history or practice but from the essence of the relationship we have to the Church in which the Holy Spirit works to continue to call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify each of us and all of us together. Luther had this high sense of the Church == reflected in the conservative nature of his Reformation. Calvin, Zwingli, and the other radical reformers were much bolder when it came to dismantling the sense of Church or transforming it from that Mother who give us life to an organization of rules and laws and minimum requirements.

When the Lutheran Confessions speak of Church and Ministry, of unity and fellowship, of liturgy and preaching -- it is within this sense of the one, the holy, catholic, and the apostolic Church. This Church exists not for her own glory but to glorify her Lord, soon to be her husband in the marriage supper of the Lamb for all eternity. This Church has the authority of Him who has chosen her -- His Word and His Sacraments, the means of grace. This Church instructs us in the faith and calls us to rightful submission when we would speak of what the faith is -- exchanging the freedom to speak as we might to speak the words that were first others before they were ours... This we believe....

I have written before that saying the Creed is my Augsburg moment each Sunday.  I relish speaking it with Lutherans because I know what it is that they believe.  And, if I have any questions, I can always pick up a single book and learn about what it is for which I am looking.  I relish speaking it with Lutherans because I know that they, too, find comfort and purpose in joint confession based on pure teaching.

When I was a missionary in Africa, one of my students invited me to spend Christmas with her family.  They were living up country and had asked the village elders permission for another missionary to visit.  Permission was granted and the invitation was accepted.

Are you ready for this?  They were Lutherans!  I wish I could remember something doctrinal about that visit, but I do not.  I barely remember being there.  What I do remember is that the Scripture passages read and the hymns sung were in Danish, for they were from Denmark.  Though I could not understand a word of what was filling my ears, I knew it was Truth.  What I remember is that, funny enough, they were thankful in all circumstances.  There they were with no modern conveniences.  The stove, while modern, was heated by coals on top and in the bin at the bottom.  Water came from huge barrels strategically placed about the property.  Scripture was read by candle light.  Yet they were thankful for all they had been given, for the opportunity to share God's Word before them, and the blessings they received in the battles they faced each day.

I know that I was quite a scandalous teacher at the mission, which was probably why the student asked me to join her.  While I was there, I climbed a waterfall, much to the amusement of the Liberians, and I screeched my way across a monkey bridge, a most rickety trespass made from three ropes that were in clear need of replacement.  I also ate country rice (it had not been filtered and thus had creepy crawly things in it) and had to seek forgiveness for the offensive display of the skin above my socks when I sat down without careful attention the placement of my skirt.

I found my time there most strange.  Where he here right now, Pastor would be grinning.  Yes, Lutherans are strange.  I found my time there most strange for the freedom I now recognize as Objective Grace.  The sermon I heard that trip was based not one word on what I should be doing, what I could do to be holy.

That was the only time in my life that I was around Christians at Christmas, the one time the holiday was not filled with anger, hatred, judgment, and/or vile acts.  Sure there were smiles and happy moments around all the gifts and the food, but the commercialism was the extent of that happiness.  There was sure to be fighting and accusations and blame and ugliness that dampens even the most hearty of appetites.  It is the same with Thanksgiving.  Try as I might, I do not see the holidays as anything other than a time during which I will be hurt, judged, and found wanting.  I get that Christmas is a time for family and not for interlopers...outsiders.  I get that.  But I wish, still, that a day twenty years ago was not all I had that was true and right and salutary.

Yes, I have seen faith as an individual act.  But I have begun to wonder if that is not another wile of the devil, wanting to keep me adrift when the safety of a boat is at my disposal.

The latest Lutheran given I have discovered, but have yet to mention, is that of  heritage.  Faith may be more corporate than I understand, but it is also a heritage to be received, cherished, and passed down.  It is a heritage not merely from Luther, not from Paul, not even from the incarnate Son of Man Jesus Christ.  Nay, it is a heritage passed from God Himself to Adam to Moses to David to Paul to Luther to me, a heritage based on the Word and the Promise that have have been before time, from all time, not just 2,000 years ago.  The traditions, Liturgy, hymnody, and prayers are riches beyond words.  The Holy Spirit uses them to draw us together into the body of Christ, to sustain us, to teach us, to renew us through Word and Sacrament.  So often, in the Lutheran blogosphere, I have read of the piety of mothers and fathers of grandparents that shaped and inform that of the child or grandchild.  The heritage passed down, the heritage received, almost makes the intangible tangible.

Piety is not a word I've heard in Protestant churches, just as with blessings, confession/absolution, and pastoral care.   The simple definition of piety is a reverence for God; synonyms include veneration, respect, awe.  For a while now, I have wanted to ask Pastor about piety.  Kleinig's book begins with it, with him reflecting upon the piety of his father and what he learned from it.  He was writing of his personal heritage, but he moves to the heritage of the Church.

As with family, heritage is not something I recognize or understand from my experience...at least nothing that is not twisted beyond measure.  My heritage is violence, drugs, alcohol, lies, sexual abuse, hatred, and silence to preserve public opinion.  


However, if I am understanding what I have been reading, my heritage is also a fierce clinging to Promise of God, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite all the world has to offer for the whole of human history.  My heritage is a confession of faith that has remained while kings and kingdoms have fallen away.  My heritage is pure and holy.

I would like to know more....